*** Guardian 2014-11-12Relatives of the 12 women who died after a state-run mass sterilisation campaign in India went horribly wrong have told local media they were forced by health workers to attend the camp.

More than 80 women underwent surgery for laparoscopic tubectomies at a free government-run camp in the central state of Chhattisgarh on Saturday. About 60 fell ill shortly afterwards, officials said. At least 14 were in a very serious condition by Wednesday and the death toll was expected to rise.

“The [health workers] said nothing would happen, it was a minor operation. They herded them like cattle,” Mahesh Suryavanshi, the brother-in-law of one casualty, told the Indian Express newspaper.
Such camps are held regularly across India as part of a long-running effort to control population growth.

Four doctors and officials have been suspended and police have registered a criminal complaint.

At least eight women have died and dozens of others are in critical condition after undergoing botched sterilisation surgery, according to local officials.

A total of 84 women, most of them poor villagers, had the operation on Saturday in a hospital outside Bilaspur city in the central state of Chhattisgarh, Siddharth Komal Pardeshi, the district magistrate, said.

The women were sent home on Saturday evening following their surgeries, but scores were later rushed in ambulances to private hospitals after falling ill. By Tuesday, eight of the women had died, Pardeshi said.

"They have all had the same symptoms" including low blood pressure, headaches, breathing problems and signs of shock, said Arvind Gupta, the director of Apollo Hospital, one of the facilities where the sick women were taken.

- Sonmani Borah, the commissioner for Bilaspur district where the camp was held, said that "64 women were taken to various hospitals since Monday night".

NDTV, a privately run Indian TV channel, reported that all of the 84 sterilisation surgeries were carried out in just five hours.

Autopsies were being performed on those who died.

The state has suspended the three government doctors who performed the surgeries, Pardeshi said.
It also will give compensation payments of about $3,300 to each of the victims' families.

Health officials 'suspended'

NDTV reported that "four top health officials" were suspended over the tragedy.

India's government, long concerned with fast population growth in a country whose population has reached , offers free sterilisation to both women and men who want to avoid the risk and cost of having a baby, though the vast majority of patients are women.

In many cases, they are offered a one-time payment for undergoing surgery of about $10-$20, or about a week's pay for a poor person in India. Hundreds of millions of Indians live in poverty.

It was not immediately clear whether the women in Bilaspur were paid for undergoing Saturday's operations.

India, with a population of 1.3 billion, has the world's highest rate of sterilisation among women, with about 37 percent undergoing such operations, compared with 29 percent in China, according to 2006 statistics reported by the UN.

In 2011-12, the government said 4.6 million Indian women had been sterilised.
Ranjana Kumari, a women's rights campaigner in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera that while sterilisation had been an important part of India's family planning drive, it was "totally unacceptable" to activists.

"- This is not just about forcing poor women into this sterilisation campaign, it is also very medically incorrect," she said.

"They are targeting women and especially poor women, to control families and also to control population.

"It is the poor women, it is the women from the villages who are targets. They are being brought like herds and groups and then they are sent for sterilisation. Women were brought for butchering."***

Guardian 2014-11-13A woman died after a second sterilisation camp was held in the
central Indian state of Chhattisgarh even as the death toll mounted from
a clinic held two days before, it has been revealed.

The number of fatalities reached 14 on Thursday and was expected to
rise, while the doctor who performed many of the operations, RK Gupta,
was arrested, according to authorities.

The news of the second camp – held after several deaths from the
first, and while dozens of very seriously ill women were being treated –
will increase pressure on authorities in the poverty-stricken Indian
state.

The women who died spent their last hours in tremendous pain, relatives have said.
About 80 women attended the first free government-run camp on
Saturday where they each had a laparoscopic tubectomy, usually a
straightforward surgical procedure. About 60 fell ill shortly
afterwards, officials said.

Family members have claimed the women were pressured to accept 1,400
rupees (£14), the equivalent of two weeks’ work for a manual labourer,
to have the surgery.

“- The [health workers] said nothing would happen, it was a minor
operation.

- They herded them like cattle,” Mahesh Suryavanshi, the
brother-in-law of one casualty, told the Indian Express newspaper.

Though at least 10 women were already dead and many more in a
critical condition in local hospitals, no attempt appears to have been
made to stop other camps being held in the state. [...]

4 kommentarer:

Dozens of women fall seriously ill after receiving state sterilisation to control growing populationTen women have died in India and dozens more are in hospital, many in a critical condition after a state-run mass sterilisation, a local official said Tuesday.Many of the more than 80 women who underwent sterilisation at the free government-run camp in the central state of Chhattisgarh on Saturday fell ill shortly afterwards, the official told AFP.[...]